Zeal Harris

liz | October 18th, 2010 | Artists | Comments Off on Zeal Harris

Artist with Ascension - Inglewood, CA circa 2010

Artist with Ascension – Inglewood, CA circa 2010

Artist Statement

SKIN DEEP: Then and Now (2020)

Statement by Zeal Harris

My task is to write a statement about “Then and Now”. I feel underqualified to do this. For me it’s been 10 years plus 40lbs that I’ve gained since the last Skin Deep exhibit. I am fatter and wiser, while no less naive about race, and no more of an expert on it. To me, things are not better. I’m not sure if things are worse, but maybe anti-racist sentiments are trending like a seasonal fad. I am cynical.

For sure, the backlash against Obama’s election (which includes the run and election of Trump) has brought more openly white supremacist, racist, sexist cockroaches out of the cracks of the kitchen. For sure, the aftermath of Obama’s presidency also reveals demographic chunks of angry leftists who felt let down by “Black Jesus reincarnated” idealist politics. For many of them, nothing felt like it changed.

Meanwhile, just type a few keys to find data that shows: (1) Neighborhoods all over the U.S. are becoming more and more politically polarized. (2) Dems and Republicans are at war for swing voter’s votes as the middle keeps moving more to the right in the population as in the current U.S. Supreme Court.(3) Overall, the entire world’s flavor has shifted more to the right in recent years.

Interestingly, the appearance of Covid-19 has brought humanity to a crossroads. We are nervous. We are fearful. We are suspicious. We are having to choose or to make-up paths blindly as it gets harder to find the light of “truth” through the chaos of internet conspiracy theories and purposeful lies.

Blacks in America have ALWAYS been in crisis. As it was during the height of the Transatlantic slave era, there is still NO PLACE in the world to which we can go that is unscathed– free of white supremacy, racism, colonialism, or imperialism. Still, the Covid unrest of the year, has me amazed by the thousands of international protestors showing out to protest the murders of American Blacks at the hands of police in what might be, to their minds, the greatest country in the world. Are these empathetic protestors also symbolically using the issue to send sideways messages to their own country’s governments about their discontent with abuse of power? I wonder this about the white protestors in Portland too.

At this very moment in time, Covid has a larger amount of people with a little more time to demand social justice. I am counting my blessings and trying to be hopeful that the protests of the left build momentum and generate new policies that will never move backwards. I want a turn of the tide. Yet I am skeptical because maybe it is only a great flood of virus, jumping out of the wild forests that we humans so greedily and irresponsibly ravage, that has the righteous power to leave a fresh new paradise in its wake. Maybe it is, as it has always been, back then, as it is now, no different in the future.

Zeal Harris creates urban-vernacular visual stories. Her influences are  highly eclectic and include; Southern Black folk art, Asian scroll paintings,  Persian miniatures, Mexican ex-votos, and Afrofuturist literature. She lives  in Los Angeles and is from Virginia and Washington D.C.. Currently, she is  working on two series of artworks. One project, Pantheon of Akatas is  about ancestral-mother-maroons on the brink of ethnogenesis while on a  quest for promised land. Her other project, I Be Livin’ Black Love consists of black-feminist themed book-style illustrations of contemporary life.

A sampling of past exhibition venues for Zeal includes; The California  African-American Museum, Prizm Art Fair, Satellite Art Fair, Ghetto  Biennale in Haiti, The Caribbean Culture Center of the African Diaspora in  New York, and the Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum in Arizona. She has  been highlighted by Art News Magazine, LA Weekly, Los Angeles Times,  Huffington Post, Obsidian Journal, Pacifica Radio, Fabrik Magazine,  Clocktower Radyo Shak, and the book, “Creative Souls: African-American  Artists in Greater Los Angeles”.

Currently, Zeal is the 2020-21 Artist in Residence at San Diego State University.  She is also an Arts & Liberal Studies lecturer at Otis College of  Art & Design and California State University at Fullerton.

Artist Statement (2010 Exhibition)
Descriptions of my art are often populated with words such as very colorful, funny, deep, and full of life.  The look of the work can be described with words such as faux-naïve, political cartooney, or urban folk arty.  Almost always, my work is based on contemporary real life stories or events experienced in daily life.  Under the surface, these micro-narratives offer socio-political commentary about a range of larger issues that often have to do with the layered experiences of race, class, gender, and sexuality.   The stories may be directly autobiographical or they may be illustrations of personally collected oral narratives. The attitude is both distinctly Black Feminist and uniquely zealous.  It is always my intention move the viewer to have an emotional experience with the work.  Simultaneously, I like to think of myself as having the luminal role of documentarian and anthropologist.

Artists and genres that inspire the aesthetic of my work are eclectic.  However, with respect to the look of my work, the bulk of inspiration comes from contemporary political cartoons, southern African-American folk art, and Harlem Renaissance narrative painters.  When I was a teenager, I drew portraits and caricatures at Busch Gardens Amusement Park in Williamsburg, Virginia.  This experience also has a profound impact of my work.  As a young adult, I attempted to become a playwright and screenwriter.  The urge to tell stories with black characters that move through space and time is probably a main factor in my experimentation with the “scrolling” format of panels that I use in many works.  In the overall body of my work, the theatricalities of my upbringing, meet with the cinematic influences that are ever-looming in Los Angeles.

Short Exhibition Resumé

EDUCATION

  • MFA, Otis College of Art & Design, CA
  • UCLA Graduate School of Film & Television, CA (1 year)
  • BFA, Howard University, Washington, DC

 

ARTIST RESIDENCIES

  • Artist in Residence San Diego State University
  • Eileen S. Kaminsky Family Foundation Artist Residency in Miami
  • Artist-in-Residence at Camera Obscura Art Lab, Santa Monica, CA
  • Participating Artist, Ghetto Biennale, Port Au Prince, Haiti

 

TEACHING

  • Los Angeles Unified School District
  • Otis College of Art & Design, CA
  • California African American Museum Education Department
  • ArtWorx LA
  • LAUSD Adult Community School ESLSubstitute Teacher

 

AWARDS

  • Foundation of Contemporary Art Emergency Grant for Experimental Artists
  • California Community Foundation Grant for “We Are Los Angeles” public art commission

 

ART FOR THE PUBLIC

BLACK LIVES MATTER

Volunteer, community art kits assembler, Inglewood, CA (2020)

Commissioned Lead Artist, altar installation (Dia de los Muertos) Hollywood, CA (2016)

CALIFORNIA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION

Commissioned Artist “We Are Los Angeles,” a public art exhibition, Los Angeles, 2016.

LA COMMONS

Commissioned Lead Artist LA Commons, “Path to Wellness”,

collaborative public art works

by South Central Los Angeles youth, 2016

AFFILIATIONS & SERVICE

Black Lives Matter Los Angeles, Association of Hysteric Curators, Black Speculative Arts Movement (BSAM), Black Artists in Los Angeles (BAILA), Shared Harvest Fund Organization,

SELECT EXHIBITIONS
GROUP EXHIBITS

(more located at www.zealsart.com/resume)

African-American Museum, Los Angeles
• 2015  “10 pick 10”, group exhibit with artists collected by Cheech Marin. Mesa Arts Center Museum, Mesa, AZ
• 2013 “Go Tell it on the Mountain”, group exhibit, California African American Museum, Los Angeles, CA

SOLO EXHIBITS

  • 2016 “Home Remedies for Driving While Black”, Solo-Exhibit, Gallery 825, Los Angeles, CA
  • 2014 “Not Where They’re Supposed to Be” solo exhibit, Wallspace LA Art Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

2016 – 2020

(Syndicated Radio and TV Program)

2012 – 2015

2008 – 2011
• “Our Weekly” Los Angeles newspaper, Arts & Entertainment section
• “Palisadian Post”, Lifestyle section, Pacific Palisades, CA
• “Los Angeles Times ”, January art review
• “LA Weekly” January art review

 

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